PLACES

I guess most folks are just like me
   with places where they love to be
   locations which can calm their life
   and help them to escape from strife

I've got more than I can count
   from ocean to a Blue Ridge mount
   none amid the metro races
   but in quiet and secluded places

Like in a lonely moonlit glade
   where proposal long ago was made
   to lovely girl 'neath starry skies
   one place where my heart still lies

The first land that I ever owned
   where skills at building first were honed
   constructing home for my young wife
   the first of many in our life

Woods where I first took a deer
   one hundred miles away from here
   long ago clear cut and laid bare
   been years since I was last there

A large and years old beaver swamp
   almost 2 miles we had to tromp
   through wood seldom seen by any other
   I used to fish there with my brother

A far secluded mountain valley
   where generations used to salley
   now hundreds of feet beneath a lake
   a reactor's cold water intake

My favorate remote hardwood hill
   almost always shaded and still
   where forest's furtive creatures slink
   a place I like to go and think

All these wild and untamed places
   where I go to escape all men's traces
   though some are now just memory
   they're each and all special to me